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Tuesday, 7 February 2012

The Strange Case of Dr Best Boy and Mr Other One

I have two sons it seems. Oh, they look the same and speak the same, they're the same age and they have the same name. They have the same weaknesses for white chocolate and Dr Who, but there IS clearly two of them.

The first one I like. He's ace, definitely the Best Boy. I don't see much of him though apart from bedtimes and special occasions and holidays. He's mostly at school where the teachers think of him as a "poppet," ruffle his curly head and award him gold stars.

They must like the first one so much that they do some kind of sneaky exchange when I collect him because I definitely get to take the second-best one home with me.

The naughty Other One who -while waiting for his sister to come out of school - will lap the playground throwing mud or pebbles or, like today, hardened ice-balls of snow with gleeful in-discrimination of where they might land.

The Other One makes his best friend cry with a over-exuberant belly-bump and then sulkily - and untruthfully - claims: "But he did it first."

The Other One is up and down the stairs like a yo-yo for hours after going to bed and has to be surgically removed from the mattress in the morning.

The Other One argues and shouts and stamps when he doesn't get his own way and storms off to his (or is it their) bedroom to sulk under the duvet.

The Other One makes me wish the ground would open up and swallow me whole, sometimes out of sheer embarrassment. Sometimes, just to escape.

Spot the Difference

The Best Boy deals with the Other One in his own special way though, when I'm at the end of patience and he's at the edge of contrition.

"I'll just put the other me, the naughty me, in a cupboard now," says the Best Boy leaving the room. And though it is very, VERY hard to tell the difference from the outside, it's the Best Boy who returns for hugs and cuddles and an episode of Dr Who snuggled on the sofa.

He always tells me how sorry the Other One feels sat in his cupboard though because he's kind like that.